The gutter press offer a few stale anecdotes about the founders of the up-and-coming marching care-bear project.

Here's the Valleywag article that first suggested the possibility of a romantic relationship between Jimbo and Andrea Weckerle. I dunno... it just seems a little weird to have two people who are dating get together to create a website whose purpose is to lecture the rest of the world about "civility." Is that their solution to the civility problem? Dinner and a movie, then maybe back to the condo for let's-just-see-how-it-goes? That's not "civility," that's "nookie." Two different things.

Back in 2006, the co-founder of a popular website publicly announced that my approach to the site (one he had helped shape) was “deeply unethical and inappropriate”, and he deleted an article that I had authored and mentioned online. Even though it wasn’t written for payment, and the subject company wasn’t even aware of the article, the co-founder mistakenly assumed it was paid content and thusly labeled it “corporate spam”. Then he indefinitely blocked my user account on the popular website, so that it could not edit any more. Some hours later, the co-founder returned to the popular website to further blast my article, calling it a “travesty of NPOV [neutral point of view]” and “corporate fluff”.

It took him about two years to finally work up the courage to publicly apologize to me for how poorly he handled the situation.

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This post has been edited by thekohser: Wed 30th December 2009, 6:40pm

Is that their solution to the civility problem? Dinner and a movie, then maybe back to the condo for let's-just-see-how-it-goes? That's not "civility," that's "nookie." Two different things.

Worked for John and Yoko.

No it didn't...

Besides, what John and Yoko were trying to do was a form of passive protest against a war, using their notoriety to draw attention to a problem. What Jimbo and Andrea are trying to do, assuming this isn't all just a big joke, is direct exploitation of an ongoing problem, using their notoriety to, in effect, gain more notoriety. (The fact that they will fail miserably notwithstanding.)

Another thing that's interesting about this is that the Wikia site currently has no links whatsoever back to civilination.org. Not one! Even the Aweckerle user page doesn't have one. However, it does say "Hi, I am Andrea, the founder of CiviliNation." Presumably if this takes off, Andrea and Jimbo will have a long, drawn-out argument over whether or not Jimbo is actually the founder.

But the ultimate hypocrisy, of course, is the "Support/Donate" page, which states:

QUOTE

By making a donation today, you are supporting CiviliNation’s efforts to create an online culture in which individuals can fully engage and contribute without fear or threat of being the target of unwarranted abuse, harassment, or lies.

In other words, Jimbo has set up a super-popular means for the rest of the world to heap abuse, harassment and lies on you, and now you can give money to Jimbo and his girlfriend so that they can talk about how awful this is, on another site that nobody ever reads!

And check out the logo:

I mean, at this point they really are just laughing their asses off at the rest of us. You'd think they could just go to a comedy club, or maybe read a funny book or go to a funny movie, but noooo - they have to do this.

Frankly, these people are hypocritical scum of the worst kind, and it's about time people who really care about "civility" did something to stop them.

The comments section for Jimbo+Andrea's Wall Street Journal editorial are hilarious, by the way. You have to go past the first page before you get anything that isn't an argument about Fox News and the Obama Administration, but they only get better after that.

In case my comment on the Reg article gets moderated out of existence (though I don't see why it would, given what the other commenters are saying):

QUOTE

The sheer, unbridled arrogance, hypocrisy, narcissism, and utter lack of self-awareness being displayed by Mr. Wales and Ms. Weckerle here are... well, totally predictable and par for the course, actually!

The thing is, on Wikipedia, accusing someone else of failing to be civil is, itself, considered a "civility violation." Wikipedia doesn't have a civil or civilized community, what they have is enforced civility, and the people enforcing it are usually 15-year-olds who are given ban-buttons and precious little else with which to do it. Meanwhile, the current motto on Ms. Weckerle's personal blog is "Attack life, wait for nothing." Yeah, that sounds really civil to me, too.

It's pretty clear to me after reading the Reg article that Jimmy created this to bitch about Valleywag, the Reg, and this site. It amuses me that he thinks of himself as the victim here.

I agree - Valleywag is clearly the main target, and WR is probably just a sideswipe (or "afterthought," or whatever the word is, I'm sure you get the general idea). I mean, right now, if you type "Jimbo Wales is an idiot" into Google, we're not even on the first page, whereas if you type in "Jimbo Wales Andrea Weckerle," our thread on the Valleywag article is #2 and the Valleywag article itself is #4. (In both cases the Jimmy Wales WP article is #1, of course, but Jimbo's not the sort to be satisfied with personal control over the #1 result, is he?)

Appropriately enough, the Jimmy Wales' Other Other Women article, featuring Ms. Weckerle and the presumably wealthier, and more Canadian Louise Blouin MacBain, appeared on Valleywag exactly a year ago. (Civilination.org was registered on Aug. 24, 2009, using DomainsByProxy - which, I suppose, means they agree with the rest of us that the need for accountability ends just before the point where you're targeted with massive amounts of domain-registrar spam.)

I'm proud of the fact that we're still the #1 result for "jimbo wales hypocrite," at least. I guess they just wanted to throw us a bone.